Presenting your accomplishments in a resume

By Ken Pelczarski, Contributing Editor | TLT Career Coach November 2025

Follow these important points when presenting accomplishments you have had with each individual employer and academic institution.

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Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.” It is seemingly a simple statement, but it capsulizes what employers search for in today’s job market—employees doing their jobs extremely well and not just carrying out tasks.
 
The amount of experience and types of positions and responsibilities you have held in your career say a lot about you and your capabilities. What really sets you apart from other job candidates, however, is your accomplishments and consistent record of success while holding these positions.

As you progress in your career, you will be promoting your accomplishments in multiple ways and venues including the following:

• Networking during a job search
• Socializing/networking in general at industry events and conferences
• Your LinkedIn profile
• Cover letters to employers
• Your resume
• A job interview

It can be argued that the most important places to promote your accomplishments are in your resume and in a job interview. A resume is often the primary reason that a person is invited for an interview. Therefore, it is recommended that you present not only your previous job duties in a resume but also the specific accomplishments that make you a special job candidate above others.

This article describes ways to construct your resume with the appropriate emphasis on career achievements. Below are the most important points to keep in mind when presenting accomplishments you have had with each individual employer and academic institution on a resume.

• Document your accomplishments regularly. You may not be able to accurately describe and summarize your career accomplishments without having consistently documented them. Details of your achievements, such as the amount of money you saved an employer or the revenue dollars gained from closing a deal with a large customer, can easily be forgotten 10-15 years from now if you rely strictly on your memory.

It is recommended that you make a written record of your accomplishments at least every one to two years. Incorporate these accomplishments into a regularly updated resume even if you have not been searching for a new position.

• Devote plenty of space to recent accomplishments. Employers aim to hire candidates who have maintained a high level of achievement motivation in recent years. They want to make sure you are not coasting at this stage of your career. Employers will look closely at what you have accomplished in the past few years.

Be sure to dedicate a lot of space on your resume to accomplishments at your most recent job or two. This is especially true if you have held each position for at least a few years and they are related to your career goals.

• Focus on accomplishments relevant to your career path. Employers are most interested in hearing about the types of accomplishments that will translate into success and affect the bottom line at their company. They do appreciate career achievements in jobs that are unrelated to their line of business. However, they are much more interested in hiring individuals with accomplishments from competitors or companies in a related business.

If your current job is unrelated to the position for which you are interviewing, it is wise to devote more space on your resume to accomplishments from earlier jobs that will be of greater benefit to the prospective employer.

• Emphasize your proudest accomplishments. When a key position needs to be filled, the primary goal of employers is to hire talent that will accomplish more in the role than other candidates whom they are interviewing.

Think about the proudest successes in your career that only a handful of your peers could likely have accomplished. These are the items you need to include on a resume, no matter where you worked or when they happened. 

• Do not ignore accomplishments from many years ago. Although employers are generally most interested in reviewing a person’s accomplishments from the last five to 10 years, they also like to see a history of success throughout a career. In other words, employers will surely have interest in pursuing job candidates who have been successful in whatever they have endeavored.

Even if you are going back to jobs from 20-30 years ago, include an accomplishment or two that will display the consistent motivation you have always had to do a great job for your employer.

• Promote volunteer accomplishments from professional organizations and technical societies. Volunteering with technical societies such as STLE can provide opportunities to lead projects, manage a team, learn new skills, raise money for programs and events and promote your field to others.

Many employers fully support these types of volunteer activities, so it will often benefit you to list a volunteer accomplishment or two on your resume.

• Mention volunteer accomplishments from community and charitable organizations. Although not as interesting to employers as volunteering in technical societies, doing work for organizations unrelated to your profession is worth mentioning on your resume.
Employers recognize the time and dedication necessary to do this type of volunteering. They also realize that skills used in these activities are often transferable to a career position. You may want to include an exceptional achievement on your resume, especially if you utilize skills that are required to be successful in your profession. 

• Quantify your accomplishments. You will greatly increase the potential benefit of your skill set in the eyes of an employer if you quantify your accomplishments on a resume. Attempt to describe your achievements in ways that enable an employer to see your ability to increase revenue and profitability.

Look at the two examples below that describe the same accomplishment in different words. 

1. Closed a deal with the company’s largest customer.
versus
2. Closed a $3 million deal, more than twice the size and the most profitable of any other sales contract in the employer’s history.

Which of the above two statements would grab your attention if you were an employer?

• Use action verbs when describing accomplishments. Action verbs are a powerful way to describe your accomplishments and grab the attention of an employer. Utilize words such as built, created, spearheaded, discovered, increased, designed, overhauled and finalized. Try to avoid weaker words such as responsible, worked, assisted and helped.

Below are a couple examples of using action verbs.

Not recommended: Responsible for finding ways to develop greener products.
Recommended: Successfully developed a brand-new line of biobased lubricants.

Not recommended: Assigned to work on minimizing waste in a fluid manufacturing process.
Recommended: Spearheaded a project that resulted in a 30% decrease in waste from a water-based fluids production process.

• Include academic achievements. Exceptional achievements in your schooling speak loudly as to the foundation of training you have in your profession. In addition, continuing formal education as well as seminars, webinars and education classes indicate an interest in new learning. 

As part of your overall history of accomplishments, employers like to see success in the academic world, especially if it occurred in recent years. Consider including the following examples of achievement on a resume, and not just your degree, school and year achieved.

- A high grade-point average
- A high class ranking
- Academic awards
- Successful grant-based research
- Selection for a prestigious internship
- Extracurricular achievements
- A high national program ranking of the school in your major

An alternative way to present your accomplishments is to list all of them above your work history in the top half of your resume. I do not recommend this approach because most employers like to see when you achieve something and with whom you were employed at the time. If you are only listing a few accomplishments, though, listing them above your work history could work. A resume addendum could also work, especially if you indicate the year and/or employer associated with each accomplishment.

Exceptional achievements go a long way toward advancing your career. However, your accomplishments will not mean quite as much if they are not presented in the best possible light on your resume. I hope the previous recommendations will help you create a resume that opens the door to great opportunities.
Ken Pelczarski is owner and founder of Pelichem Associates, a Chicago-based search firm established in 1985 and specializing in the lubricants industry. You can reach Ken at (630) 960-1940 or at pelichem@aol.com.